The government must introduce “stronger and more effective safeguards” to protect the rights of service-users who face having their freedom restricted by health and care providers, disabled campaigners have told a minister.

Inclusion
London wrote to care minister Caroline Dinenage yesterday (Wednesday) about the
government’s mental
capacity (amendment) bill, which is currently awaiting its Commons
report stage.

The two
disabled people’s organisations have headed campaigning efforts aimed at
persuading the government to rethink the “potentially dangerous” bill that is
set to affect the lives and welfare of hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

The bill will introduce a new system, Liberty
Protection Safeguards (LPS), which will replace the
crisis-ridden Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and will
apply to service-users who are said to need to have restrictions placed on
their liberty as part of their care but are considered to be unable to consent
to those arrangements.

In her letter, Dinenage says she believes ministers have addressed
Inclusion London’s concerns, by building in protections against conflicts of
interest for those making decisions about a person’s deprivation of liberty; ensuring
entitlement to independent advocacy; and making sure the necessary information
is provided to those subject to the LPS process.

She says the government will also develop a wide-ranging code of practice
to “bring the new system to life”, and she invites disabled people’s organisations
and self-advocacy groups to work on the code of practice “to ensure that the
Bill does promote and protect Disabled people’s liberty”.

But despite her
letter and some government concessions in the last few weeks, Inclusion London said
yesterday in its own letter to Dinenage that many of its key
concerns remained.

Tracey Lazard (pictured), Inclusion London’s chief executive, says in the letter: “We recognise there is a need to reform the current DoLS system but this cannot be used to justify pushing through what we still believe is an ill thought out bill that weakens people’s rights and was developed with very little consultation – next to none with Disabled people.

“The bill is
continuing its rapid passage through Parliament without pause, despite a very
broad and strong consensus among professionals, advocates, Disabled people,
lawyers and academics that there are serious flaws in the Bill and the proposed
system that must be addressed.”

Lazard says
in the letter that it is “utterly unacceptable” that “repeated requests for
accessible information about the bill were ignored over the last six months”,
leading to the conclusion that “people with learning difficulties have simply
been disregarded as a valid stakeholder in this process”.

She says
that the publication of an easy read summary of the bill on 31 January “can
only be viewed as a tokenistic gesture given the very little time remaining to
influence the bill and the lack of any detail in the document to enable people
to have a meaningful say”.

Lazard’s
letter includes some of the “stronger and more effective safeguards” that are
needed to ensure the protection of people facing a deprivation of liberty.

They include
the need to address conflicts of interest faced by independent hospitals and
care home managers; to ensure access to advocacy and the right to accessible
information; and to make sure that less restrictive living arrangements that
could potentially be put in place are considered as part of the LPS process.

Nearly 200,000 people have now signed a petition drawn up by Inclusion London that calls for major changes to the bill.

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.